Twenty Five and a Half.
Yesterday I crossed the halfway mark of my twenty-fifth year.
I’d looked forward to turning twenty-five for a long time. Something about the rounded-figure, something about the texture of the age has always appealed to me. And it has delivered, and continues to do so. By far the most enjoyable thing about being twenty-five has been the deep contemplation that seems to accompany everything I do these days. I have always loved to think but boy, the way my mind turns and runs and spins ceaselessly now? It is nothing short of miraculous (and exhausting but hey!). As a result of this, many of my relationships and friendships have deepened in surprising ways, not always marked by frequency of communication, but I have come into a deeper understanding of who I am, and who they are and what exactly it means to navigate this labyrinth we call life.
In my second year here on my MFA, I taught general education literature to college students. I themed my syllabus: ‘The Power of The Personal and The Elemental’, a class committed to exploring the power of our personal stories and the ones told by the material world around us. We read Rumi, Ocean Vuong, Toni Morrison, Mary Oliver, Chris Dennis and a host of other writers very dear to my heart. I have always had an aptitude for teaching. But I was never aware of the sheer amount of administrative work that made a class possible. All the scheduling and emails, all the arrangements and lesson planning, all that careful calibration that makes a finished product possible.
In a very similar way, this year of my life has been a constant education in the sheer effort it takes to build things; be it a life, a book, or even a romantic relationship. The things we see standing, the structures we love and take refuge in take tremendous amounts of work to construct and sustain. Nothing is incidental. Nothing that has value is whipped out of thin air. And this may sound so….obvious. But there is a way that as a teenager and even as a young adult, it is easy to be beneficiary of structures that you yourself did not have to build. Your parents, your school, some other person has had that responsibility. I’ve found myself shouldering a lot of that responsibility more recently. Of thinking more seriously about the scaffolding that holds up a life; the values, the people, the questions, the work. It is all now resting on you. It is you that must do the work to have these things be distilled and refined, upheld by the tenacity of your heart.
It blows my mind. And it does not cease.
The wheel does not stop spinning because you have had a bad day, the demands of a life sing on and on and on, even when you are too weary to lift your voice in response. A very clear example; I had to teach on my birthday this year. As much as I wanted this ceremonious celebration of this long awaited year, the demands of my life were waiting. But even in that wheel, even in that never-ending stream, we find moments to breathe, moments of rest, moments to remember that we are people, too. Like me letting my students listen to Frank Ocean and catch up on some reading on my birthday so I could soak in the moment and give myself some room to breathe.
And there is no where I breathe better than in my mother’s house in Lagos. Nowhere my shoulders sag in complete rest like next to my sister on our couch, Kiki cuddling between us as my brothers fiddle away on their laptops over on the dining table. Of all the structures that take everything to build, none are quite like family. Like the people that witness your very own construction. My siblings and I are all in this phase of awakening; of figuring out what it means to build a life that honours your inner truth. A life you can look upon with pride and satisfaction. A life that feels yours, and not like it was foisted upon you. And that’s difficult to do in a place like Nigeria that limits your options so severely. Every time my sister calls me now to update me on the price of fuel, I enter a confused state, my mouth hanging open. But even in the midst of the ever descending chaos, she is building her life one brick at a time. The wheel does not stop.
Yoruba people have a saying; ‘eyan l’aso’ — people are a covering. And I have felt the truth of that statement in such a deep and startling way in year twenty-five. From being housed — literally covered — by Ope and Iremide in London, to Facetime calls with Ahunna where I am crying and her voice literally soothes my heart, to Femi and I catching up in my father’s living room, seeing his dreadlocks in person for the first time, remembering a time when we were such different people, wanting such different things. I remain incredibly humbled by the ways in which my friendships continue to persevere. The ways in which time zones and relocations and career changes and lifestyle changes have not dented the divinity of this sacred thing. To have people that have seen different versions of me and have loved and embraced every single one. I think of Franklyne, who has watched me morph so thoroughly in the five years he has known me, and yet our conversations flow with laughter and understanding. It is such a privilege to be covered in this way and every time I go home, I feel that covering afresh. And new people make exquisite additions to the quilt that covers me; like Gracie here in Iowa in whose face I have found kinship, on whose couch I sleep on the days when the solitude slices a little too deeply and I want to remember what it feels like to not be so alone.
Being twenty five has also made me comfortable with the glaring truth that there are things I do not know how to do. As an overachieving efiko, I have gone through life mostly shielded in the expanse of my capacity. Aside from driving, I don’t think anything has ever humbled me with incapacity. And even that hurdle is one long in my past. But when you do not do many things, it is easy to feel like you can do everything. For example, I couldn’t skip. But everyday this month, with encouragement from my loved one, I skipped for ten minutes everyday. The first few days sucked. The rope kept getting stuck in my feet and I could not do more than five in a go. Yesterday I did 60 in a go. It took one month. It took many frustrated sighs, many abeg-why-am-i-even-doing-this moments. But see.
Similarly, working on my memoir has humbled me down to my very core. When you’re doing something you have never done before, there is no safety net. You jump. You fail. You look stupid. All the sentences suck. But in doing that, there is a shedding of the self that makes you lighter, more ready for flight. The book that has revealed itself to me this year is so different from the book I thought I was writing. Being confronted with this new adventure, I’ve had to gain a whole new skillset, step out of what feels comfortable and safe and pay the cost of my dreams. Cost. Another thing I can’t stop thinking about these days. How much everything costs, and I don’t mean money. Our desires have a cost. Our dreams have a cost. And if we do not pay them, we get nothing.
For instance in my walk with God, the cost of drawing nearer is my time. So I have to ask myself if I have three hours to scroll on IG a day, or if that time can be spent better in the word of God. For my writing, there is a cost. I have to shed my fear of failure, my fear of bad sentences, because that fear will prevent me from wiring anything at all and so I pay the cost so I do not have to continue to stare at empty pages. The cost of my friendships is to check in as frequently as I can, not allowing guilty of forgotten birthdays to cripple me. The cost of keeping things running with The Institute, (check us out!) is to remember to reply emails and keep contact with people. If you refuse to pay the cost, the thing will continue to elude you. Nothing is incidental.
These last six months have been very contemplative.
I’ve been thinking a lot. Of resilience; of how your world can come to an end but somehow day after day, you continue to exist in the ruins until all around you is lightness and joy. I revel in the beauty of this life we live, that the very thing you expect to utterly destroy you does not. You are still somehow standing, and not too long after, you are dancing again. I rejoice in the gift of documentation. Sometimes I just sit and look at pictures of myself through the years and I marvel at the miracle of becoming. Of changing and remaining entirely the same. Of seeing victories won, and battles that are ongoing. Like I continue to struggle with emotional regulation. I tell myself almost every day now: emotions are a well to draw from, not an ocean to drown in. emotions are a well to draw from, not an ocean to drown in. emotions are a well to draw from, not an ocean to drown in. Mofiyinfoluwa, I hope you are listening.
All in all, I continue to be rooted and carried by my God. Every breath I breathe, every word I write, every person in my life, every good and perfect gift is from The Father of Lights in whom there is no changing and no shadow. I don’t even know what these past six months would have been like if not for being buried in The Rock of Ages. If not for The Hand of God carrying me from country to country, from place to place, soothing my aching spirit, reminding me of the good plans He has planned for me from long ago. Reminding me to rest. To believe. To look upward and not inward. Every singe Thursday I show up for a Bare and Blessed meeting — especially on the days where it is the last thing I want to do — I learn a bit about a God who always shows up, and how faithfulness is something we should always be grateful for. I am writing, but I should be writing more. I have so much to say. So much to render on the page. SO many seeds to sow into the ground. On the 1st of October, The 2024 Abebi Award in Afrononfiction will be announced and I will get yet another opportunity to do the work I have always dreamed of doing; to use storytelling as a means to build community, to generate conversation and healing.
I don’t take it for granted that I live the life that I do. It’s so easy to get caught up in complaining and comparison, in wishing for this or for that but writing things like this reminds me that I am so utterly blessed to do the things that are important to me, the things that I was made to do. So here we are, bending to the earth and planting seed. Tending to it with patient dedication. My book is all about bodies, and I think of Rumi, who when he asked, what is the body, gave just one word in answer; endurance.
The body endures. We endure. It is how we exist. It is how we continue. Day after day, month after month, year after year, we show up and do the work of building lives that feel true to us, lives that we can be proud of, lives that we can find rest in. The next six months of twenty five feel very good and I know my God will make it just so.
